


i got nothing left inside of my chest, but it's all alright

by butiamhome



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5 Things, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4884925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butiamhome/pseuds/butiamhome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five things jack zimmermann doesn't think he deserves and one thing he would like to.</p><p>trigger warning for overdosing on medication, anxiety, etc. for the purposes of this fic assume that jack overdosed on a take-as-needed anxiety medication such as klonopin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i got nothing left inside of my chest, but it's all alright

i.   _…But one day he took too much. And nearly lost everything._

Jack doesn’t deserve to be alive right now.

He knows that much.

He had been so responsible with his meds, had tried to regulate them out as best he could even when the pain in his chest and the twitch in his hands reminded him that he needed to take them, and quickly, and often.

But some days are harder than others. He’d spend five, ten extra minutes locked in his bathroom at home before leaving for a game just to calm himself down from loud, gasping breaths and an impulse to curl up in the bathtub and cry.

To this day, Jack’s not sure if he just shook too many pills out of the bottle and counted wrong, or if he reached in for extra himself. He’s afraid to try and remember.

He’s ashamed that his mother had to find him like that, collapsed on the bathroom floor.

Jack doesn’t remember how long he’s hated himself, but he remembers checking out of the hospital and into a rehabilitation facility, and the memory burns. His mother cried, and his father was just…stoic. 

He tried to look up how much it cost for him to stay, but the website was nice, discreet, and he didn’t know where else to look. But he knows it cost a lot—not just in cash, but in his father’s reputation, his own.

He wonders if it was worth it.

 

ii. _“Promise me you’ll stop being so hard on yourself.” “…Okay, Dad.”_

Jack doesn’t deserve his father’s love. 

He knows he has it—knows that he’s lucky that way, to have parents that love him pretty much unconditionally—but he still feels like he has to earn it.

He can barely meet his dad’s eyes. It’s hard enough to talk to him on the phone, even in French, which none of the guys understand well enough to follow. But when Bittle catches him outside the stadium that one time— _Shit._ —it’s like he understands what’s going on anyway.

He wishes he could be a normal son, one who didn’t have to assure his dad that he was allowed to come to his hockey games despite the uptick in anxiety he’ll inevitably feel, one who didn’t even have this high baseline level of anxiety he has to control with breathing and cognitive behavioral therapy now that he’s no longer able to—well.

He wishes he could be a son his father could be proud of. His dad insists that he is. They’ve had so many quiet fights about it, about the unnecessary amount of pressure he puts on himself, but he’s not sure he’ll ever feel worthy of pride from _the_ Bad Bob.

 

iii. _“And with a rare unanimous vote, the captain for the next school year is…Jack Zimmermann.”_  

Jack doesn’t deserve his teammates.

Even when they’re being a pain in his ass, he doesn’t deserve it—Ransom and Holster’s weird in-sync thing, Shitty naked on his bed doing whatever it does that Shitty does on the internet, the Frogs being, well, Frogs.

Sometimes Jack feels so outside of it all, like the supervisor who’s not invited to the bar after work because it’ll be less fun. He knows that’s not how the guys think of him at all, he knows they care about him even if he’s too “lame” to get a nickname, too into “boring white guy shit” for Shitty not to chirp him, too… whatever it is he is to participate in the wild Haus kegsters. Sometimes it’s like there’s a layer of glass between him and everyone else, and he can hear the fun and sometimes play along, but he’ll never be close enough to the real action. Never fully immersed in it, because half the time his mind is racing along some other track.

He can be a jerk as captain, too, and he wonders how and why the guys put up with him when he gets like that.

He’s hell on Bittle, especially— _Bittle. It was a lucky shot._ —but when those analysts start talking shit on TV in a restaurant, Bittle chimes in almost immediately, trying to tell him the guy’s wrong. Holster calls the guy an asshole first, but Bittle’s right behind him. 

Jack doesn’t deserve that, not from someone he’s been so rough with. And he certainly doesn’t deserve the unanimous—unanimous!—vote for another year as captain.

He wonders what they see in him, anyway.

 

iv. _“If Jack Zimmermann can even make it to the NHL, he’s going to be mediocre at best.”_

Jack doesn’t deserve all the media attention he gets.     

And he really wishes he didn’t get any at all, to be honest. It’s just another side effect of being Bad Bob’s kid—first defiling the Stanley Cup twice, now sports analysts discussing him as if he’s just a hockey machine, not a real person. 

It was bad enough when it was good, when he was the wunderkind, looking at being the number one NHL draft pick. They talked about his future as a player almost as often as he thought about it, which was impressive considering he never _stopped_ thinking about it.

But now that he’s looking at the future he has in front of him after the incident and the break, it’s a hundred times worse. They compare him to Lindsay Lohan, whoever that is, and pick him apart like vultures. They make him feel even less human than he does already.

He does his best to avoid reading headlines and speculation, but when he’s reading about other players, it’s so easy just to…scan articles for his name. At least he’s stopped compulsively Googling himself.

But when it comes on the TV while he and the guys are out to eat, it’s unavoidable. The TV is mounted too high to change the channel quickly, and while the team tries to talk loudly over it and call the waitress over to ask about the remote, Jack makes his escape.

He speed-walks to the bathroom and locks the door behind him, splashes his face with water and stares himself down in the mirror, trying to remember his breathing exercises.

It doesn’t matter what they say, he tries to remind himself. All that matters is how he plays.

It’s never quite enough.

 

v.   _“Because Jack Zimmermann works harder than God.”_

Jack doesn’t deserve a break.

To be fair, it’s not like he really has a second to spare, between his senior year classes, workouts, practice, games, homework, talking to his dad, talking to agents, and worrying about the future. The latter takes up every single blank space in his schedule, if he’s being honest.

And of course, there’s helping Bittle, too. The kid is still terrified of checks, so Jack still tries to find time—even stupid-early in the morning—to drag him to the rink to run drills and coach him. It’s his responsibility as captain, of course, to make sure all his players are doing their best, but he thinks Bittle needs extra attention, what with his fainting-goat tendencies and mental block. 

He wonders how he’ll cope when he’s a professional athlete. He worries he’ll work himself to the bone, worry himself back into a real bad place.

But he hasn’t done it yet, and he can’t afford to waste any more time thinking about that right now, not when there’s so much to do.

He’ll sleep when he’s earned it. 

 

i. _“You’re a better player when you’re with Bittle.” “…Oh.”_

 Jack absolutely does not deserve Eric Bittle.     

He’s a bit of a handful, needing extra time and work on his mental block about getting checked.

But he’s also sort of an angel, covered in flour and making the Haus smell like a home. The team is eating better than they have in ages, what with Bittle’s baking and occasionally more savory fare. It’s inspiring, what the guy can do with an oven and a rolling pin.

The thing that really gets to Jack about Bittle, though, is how much he cares. Yes, the rest of the team cares about him—he’s their captain, their friend—but Bittle, even when he’s a Frog and Jack is being hard on him, seems to go out of his way for Jack.

Plus Bittle makes him a better player. Jack explain it in diagrams and plays, but if he thinks about it too long, he’s still sort of astonished.

He doesn’t really know how to respond, if he’s being honest with himself. So he’s harsh for a while, unnecessarily rude just out of sheer confusion. No one has been this…not just kind or friendly, but gentle with him for a long time. Bittle treats Jack the way Jack’s therapist wishes he would treat himself.

It’s kind of scary, in a way. Bittle asks him if he’s okay and sits down and waits to hear the answer. Bittle sends him care packages of cookies over break, and while that’s a very Bittle thing to do, Jack’s not entirely sure that he does it for anyone else.

 Jack doesn’t deserve Eric Bittle, but he’d sure as hell like to.

**Author's Note:**

> jack zimmermann is my best hockey dude--i hope i've done him justice. 
> 
> shout out to the h-e-double-hockey-sticks group text for their help and to ngoziu for making such a rad webcomic!


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